Time away to get over myself and get moving towards the positive :)

I don’t like to keep banging on about my personal (business) issues here on the blog as I’m sure that many people just come to read about chemistry and stuff but for those of you with a business or who follow me because I am working with you as a consultant I feel it is good to for me to be open and honest about my professional journey. That is because it is all too easy to see the happy, happy, joy, joy and miss the depth and struggle that goes on behind the scenes of running a business.

So I’ll indulge myself just a little and hopefully it will be readable.

As you might have gathered from my previous post I had been finding the whole job of creating video content quite a challenge and not at all fun. I want to make it perfectly clear here (as I believe my original post might not have) that I wasn’t so much frustrated and challenged by the physical process of video making (filming and scripting) although that was harder than I would have liked, I was grappling with myself and more specifically what I wanted to portray in these video clips – a ‘who am I and what am I trying to do’ crisis.

I had dived into the video making process much like I tend to dive into everything else, quickly, enthusiastically and with the expectation that the sheer process of just doing it (I should be sponsored by NIKE) would somehow magically project what I was all about onto the screen and be awesome. But it didn’t work like that and instead I looked pretty dull and un-polished compared to others who do this already (never compare yourself to others).

Luckily for me I had a weekend away planned – some time away from the coal-face to get some perspective and process events of the last couple of weeks. I was only on the plane for five minutes when it clicked what my problem was and what’s more, how I was going to fix it.

It turns out that branding in any form has to be deliberate, consciously re-enforced and planned rather than left to chance but more than that it also has to be authentic and from the heart (be yourself, everyone else is taken).

In the rush to ‘get things done’ I’d skipped the ‘what do I want out of this for Realize Beauty and for me’ bit and gone straight into what I call ‘busy work’. I often see this with my clients, client who want to jump in and capitalise on a hot trend or be at a particular event or meeting with loads of new products. Invariably when I see my clients trying to rush the process because they are singularly focused on the outcome things go wrong and projects end up taking longer and costing more than they need to. Clients that sit back and strategically work through new opportunities before pursuing them to their timetable generally do much better and suffer less drama in the long-term. The tortoise and the hair…..

Sadly for me, even with my years of experience I had dived into this new venture with two boots and a blindfold.

No wonder it hurt.

Anyway, the bottom line is that with a bit of space and a heavy dose of soul-searching and discussion with my sister Realize Beauty assistant Rebecca (she bares the brunt of my self-doubt and getting over it self talk bless her) I’ve got it and myself sorted.

As I can’t afford to set up a studio and pay for a production team at the moment I’ve come to terms with the reality that my first attempts at video will probably be technically poor to average at best but what I am sure of is that my video’s will be coming from the heart and will be reenforcing the Realize Beauty philosophy and modus operandi. I am also sure that my videos will become another way for me to share my love of chemistry, texture, colour and flow with you, my readers as I take you on a journey into the beauty and magic that exists within the formulating process.

It feels good to have faced my fears and be moving on in a positive way.